A point earned is a dollar saved!

July 5, 2016September 25, 2016

The Quest for 50,000 jetBlue miles

Or, how I completely lost my mind. Hear me out though, as this is going to get interesting.

About a week ago, jetBlue introduced a points match promotion targeting Virgin America flyers. The gist of it is that depending on how many points you had in your Virgin America account, jetBlue would match–with one caveat: you need to also buy and fly a roundtrip on jetBlue before August 31.

How ~31,000 Virgin America points become 50,000 jetBlue points.

So I did what any (in)sane person would do: I hopped on this promotion before it got overwhelmed by interest! Here’s how it went down:

June 28: Sent jetBlue a screenshot of my Virgin America points balance (~31,000). This will net me 50,000 jetBlue points.

July 1: jetBlue replied and indicated that I had been enrolled in the #GoForthWithJetBlue points match promotion. Only after you received this e-mail could you buy a qualifying roundtrip flight.

July 2: Purchased a roundtrip flight JFK-HYA-JFK for $128.10 for July 26. For those who don’t know, HYA is Barnstable Municipal Airport on Cape Cod, a quick hop of only 196 miles from JFK. The flights will take a whopping 65 minutes each way. Once I get there, I will immediately turn around and fly back.

JFK-HYA-JFK. Image courtesy of Great Circle Mapper.

After I fly, the 50,000 points should be in my account within 4-6 weeks.

This sounds crazy, you say (don’t worry, I’m used to it at this point)! Here’s the deal: I paid $128.10 and a personal day from work for 50,000 jetBlue miles. If you were to buy jetBlue miles at this time of this post going up, it would set you back $1,375; however, jetBlue only lets you buy up to 30,000 miles a year. To me this is a no-brainer!

I’m not quite sure what to do with these points yet, but Nick and I are planning a Florida vacation, so we may use them for that. Flights from JFK to Portland, ME, are also super cheap (~13,000 points per person round trip), and that’s also been a weekend getaway in the back of our minds.

I’ll keep you all updated on how my flight is and when I get the points–from one crazy adventure to another!

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So here’s the deal. I’m a twenty-something who’s travel ambitions are larger than my wallet sometimes likes to allow, but that’s what happens when you work for a small non-profit in NYC. Because of that, I’ve decided to create this blog to highlight that travel of all kinds–from weekend trips to Philly to a week in Hawai’i–are attainable.